“You don’t know shit about me or my mission, Colonel!”
“I don’t fucking care to know!”
“All right, both of you, shut up,” General Samson interjected.
“Colonel, you listen to what this man has to say. I’ll give you an opportunity to talk. Now you listen.”
“Yes, sir,” Jamieson relented. “Sorry, but I’m a little confused and a little angry that I’m being ‘volunteered’ for some illegal ops. So what does this Future Flight want with me?”
“General Griffith is taking command of Air Vehicle 01 I and assigning it to Future Hight,” McLanahan explained. “My job is to assist Colonel Dominguez in equipping it, then to recruit, train, and fly reconnaissance and defense-suppression missions in the Middle East. I’ve chosen you to be my aircraft commander.”
“What?”
“I’ve been tasked with forming a group that can support secret high-risk deep-strike and reconnaissance operations worldwide.
The B-2A stealth bomber is the best strike platform out there; the President and the National Security Council agree. I’ve been tasked to recruit B-2A flight and support crews from the active-duty ranks, among others, to support group operations.”
“You mean, you’re forming a secret squadron to fly B-2A bombing missions?” Jamieson asked incredulously.
“That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. Pardon me, General, but I don’t believe what I’m hearing here’ “You go ahead, Tiger,” Samson said, fixing McLanahan with a satisfied smile.
“You got something to say, say it.”
“So what about it, McLanahan?” Jamieson asked, arms crossed on his chest.
McLanahan didn’t need to be an expert on body language to know that Jamieson wasn’t going to buy any explanations—those crossed arms were like a wall erected against any suggestions. “I don’t have to explain anything to you, Colonel. My instructions were to recruit you to fly missions for me and my team and see to the refit of my plane.”
“Your plane?”
“Air Vehicle 01 I,” McLanahan said. “Colonel Dominguez’s techs are modifying it as we speak.”
“Modifying it? Are you crazy? That’s our best plane!” Jamieson cried. “That bird is tweaked tighter than any other bird Northrop’s ever cranked out! It’s got the lowest radar cross-section, the best engines, the best hydraulics, the best..
“It should have the best of everything—I spent two years on that bird back in Dreamland, redesigning and improving almost every aspect of that plane’s performance,” McLanahan said. “Air Vehicle 01 I used to be Test Vehicle 002 …”
“The one that was supposedly tested to destruction?”
“Yes, sir,” McLanahan said. “HAWC rescued it, rebuilt it—we probably spent a quarter of a billion dollars on making it airworthy and upgrading it. I spent plenty of long nights with the engineers to squeeze every knot of performance out of that plane, before the Philippines conflict. That’s the plane I flew into combat—twice. It’s the only bird in the fleet already modified to carry reconnaissance pods, anti-radar missiles, cruise missiles …”
“it can’t be the same one,” Jamieson pointed out. “AV-011 doesn’t have a MILSTREAM data bus yet for the release systems—it’s only hard-wired for dumb bombs. It can’t carry any ‘smart’ weapons without a-“
“We didn’t use MILSTD buses on test articles at HAWC,” McLanahan said. MILSTD, or Military Standard, was the generic term for the standard electrical and electronic circuits and systems developed by the U.S. military for civilian contractors—every weapons design used MILSTD, SO the plane could “talk” with the weapons or other systems. “They were too slow, too old, and too easy to jam or disrupt. We borrowed a few commercial-grade data buses from a company in Arkansas—sixty-four-bit logic, clock speed well into triple digits, fiber optics ready, secure and hardened. It’s all plumbed for our own data bus—the Sky Masters people I brought with me are going to reinstall the system in about three hours.
Ever have any problems with the radar?”
“No,” Jamieson replied, “but we haven’t had much trouble with any of our radars.”
“If your troops opened up the SAR on AV-011, you wouldn’t have known what to do with it,” McLanahan said proudly. “We modified some of its subsystems for reconnaissance as well as for targeting and terrain avoidance, far beyond Block 30 standards. Range is doubled, resolution tripled, and it has air, sea, and electromagnetic spectrum search as well as ground mapping, terrain following, and targeting—the radar can act as a signal processor for programming antiradar missiles and for jamming. We were doing terrain-following years before Block 30 was announced.”
Now Jamieson was intrigued. He’d always suspected that organizations like HAWC did cool stuff like this, and he had always wanted to be a part of it—but was this the way to do the job? “I still don’t buy it, McLanahan,” Jamieson said. “You’ll be conducting military missions in support of … who? The National Security Council? The CIA? The Boy Scouts of America?”
“Listen, Colonel, I was given a task to perform—to get you and Test Vehicle Double-Ought-Two ready to fly, for me,” McLanahan said impatiently. “We were assured full cooperation by General Samson and General Wright. In exchange, I agreed to tell you a little bit about what’s going on. I was not authorized to answer any questions, and I’m sure I’ve told you far more than I’m supposed to tell. Now you’ll agree to cooperate in this project and prepare to-“
“Hey, mister, I don’t fly for nobody unless I know the whole story,” Jamieson said. “I’m not participating in any secret backroom espionage Ollie North-Air America stunt that’s gonna get me in front of some congressional committee or a court-martial.
You tell me what’s going on, and then I’ll think about helping you.”
McLanahan noticed General Samson’s satisfied smile, as if he were saying, “I told you he wouldn’t take kindly to threats, boy.”
“General Samson said that approach wouldn’t fly,” McLanahan said, “which is why I decided not to take the tough-guy approach with you.”
“You’re smarter than you look, McLanahan …
“So I’ll just say this, Jamieson.” McLanahan stepped closer to Tiger Jamieson and regarded him with an amused stare. “You will agree to accompany me on this mission and cooperate, or … I’ll get someone else.”
“You’ll what?” Jamieson was as surprised as if he’d just kissed him on the lips. “You can’t do that …” Jamieson instantly decided it was a bluff. “Yeah, right, don’t make me puke, McLanahan,” Jamieson said acidly. He noticed the shit-eating grin on McLanahan’s face, then turned to Samson—the big three-star was not smiling. “You’re crazy, McLanahan,” Jamieson sputtered nervously. “Who else are you going to get?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll find someone.”
“Hey, buster, I trained each and every B-2A crewdog on the entire planet,” Jamieson said, jabbing a thumb into his own chest to drive the point home, then jabbing a finger at McLanahan, “except maybe you, and I’m not totally convinced you’re fully qualified.
I’ve forgotten more about the Beak than everyone else put together knows. You can’t get no one better because there aren’t nobody better.”
“I’ll get Ed Carlisle,” McLanahan said calmly. “He’s the 715th Bomb Squadron commander, young, lots of hours, bright guy, and the 715th hasn’t stood up yet.”
“Carlisle? ‘Boondock’ Carlisle, the only guy ever to get, lost while flying a B-2A bomber?” Jamieson exclaimed. “The guy’s got fifty million dollars’ worth of navigation gear sitting in front of him, and he still managed to fly out of the RED FLAG range during an exercise—he was nearly in Los Angeles before he figured out where he was. The guy’s a former Navy pilot, for God’s sake!”
“He’s also written the book on B-2A combat tactics,” McLanahan repeated, standing up and packing up his briefcase. “He’s a forward thinker, an innovator, a planner—you’re just a throttle jockey. The bottom line, Jamieson, is this: you’re either in with me, or you’re out. We’re going to take aerial strike warfare into the next century, today, and if you’re not with me, you’ll be left behind. So what’s it going to be?”
“Don’t fuck with me, McLanahan,” Jamieson said angrily. He realized that McLanahan was serious—he was not going to select him if he didn’t cooperate! “You’re obviously not thinking about the success or failure of your project—you’re only out to throw your weight around. This is some kind of damned power trip for you …
“I don’t play games, Colonel,” McLanahan warned. “I’ve been given a job to do, and I’m doing it. I’m wasting
